Oracle A.I.M. Methodology encompasses a project management methodology with documentation templates that support the life cycle of an implementation. The life cycle methodology and documentation templates allows A.I.M. to be a very useful tool for managing implementation projects successfully. This is a depiction of the A.I.M. methodology life cycle:

Application Implementation Method is a proven approach for all the activities required to implement oracle applications. there are eleven processes of implementation.

5. Build and Module Design [MD] – This phase emphasizes the development of new functionality (customization) required by the client. It mainly details how to design the required forms, database and reports.

6. Data Conversion [CV] – Data Conversion is the process of converting or transferring the data from legacy system to oracle applications. Ex. Transferring customer records from the legacy to the Customer Master.

How does AutoAccounting work?

For each accounting transaction, you define rules to determine the appropriate account to charge. Each accounting transaction is identified by an AutoAccounting function. AutoAccounting functions are components of programs that you submit to generate accounting entries.

How do you implement AutoAccounting?

The steps are as follows: a). Design your AutoAccounting setup based on your implementation data. b). Define lookup sets. Navigation – Setup/AutoAccounting/Lookup Sets. To define a lookup set, you specify pairs of values. For each intermediate value, you specify a corresponding account segment value. One or more related pairs of intermediate values and segment values form a lookup set. You may need several lookup sets to map organizations to cost centers, expenditure types to account codes, event types to account codes, or for other situations where the segment value depends upon a particular predefined parameter. You can use a lookup set more than once; several AutoAccounting rules can use the same lookup set. You define and modify lookup sets using the AutoAccounting Lookup Sets window. c). Define rules. Navigation – Setup/AutoAccounting/Rules. Each AutoAccounting rule you define supplies one Accounting Flexfield segment value at a time. Thus, you need to specify one AutoAccounting rule for each segment in your Accounting Flexfield for each AutoAccounting transaction you want to use. Some of the AutoAccounting rules you define can be quite simple, such as always supplying a constant company code or natural account. Others can draw upon context information (parameters), such as the revenue category for a particular posting or the organization that owns a particular asset. You can even use multiple parameters to provide a segment value. You can reuse the same AutoAccounting rules for many different functions and their transactions. You define rules based on project information that you enter. You can use these AutoAccounting parameters as input values to your rules. Note: AutoAccounting does not use Flexfield security rules when determining a valid account combination. You must define your AutoAccounting rules to determine the appropriate account based on the rules required by your company. d). Assign rules for each function. Navigation – Setup/AutoAccounting/ Assignments. When you are assigning rules to an AutoAccounting function, you may want to assign different rules to different conditions. For example, you may want to account for indirect projects using one set of rules, and use two different sets of rules for billable items and nonbillable items on contract projects. To make it easy to do this, Oracle Projects provides function transactions to each function, which identifies commonly used conditions in which you may want to assign different rules. You can assign rules to function transactions for each AutoAccounting function. You complete the following steps to assign AutoAccounting rules to AutoAccounting functions and transactions: Enable each transaction you want to use For each transaction you enable, you specify an AutoAccounting rule for each segment of your Accounting Flexfield

How does AutoAccounting compare to Workflow Account Generator?

Both the account generation processes in Oracle Workflow and AutoAccounting in Oracle Projects can create account numbers dynamically, based on transactions in Oracle Projects. This section compares the Account Generator to AutoAccounting, and provides directions for: Assigning a constant or lookup value to a segment Assigning an attribute parameter to a segment Deriving a segment value Learning more about SQL functions to generate account codes

ACCOUNT GENERATOR TERMS OR FUNCTIONALITY

EQUIVALENT IN AUTOACCOUNTING

Workflow or Item Type Function

Function

Process

Defining and assigning rules to segments

Attribute

Parameter

Assigning a constant to a segment

Assigning a constant AutoAccounting rule to a segment

Assigning an attribute parameter to a segment

Assigning an AutoAccounting rule that uses a parameter, which becomes the value (a lookupset is not used)

Assigning a lookup set value to a segment

Assigning an AutoAccounting rule that passes a parameter to a lookup set to determine the segment value

Deriving a segment value by using SQL statements or If conditions

Using an AutoAccounting rule that derives the intermediate value or segment value via a SQL statement.

I have an AutoAccounting Error – where do I start?

In most cases, when a user encounters an AutoAccounting error when processing Oracle Projects transactions, you will utilize the debug log file to find the source of the error. Most AutoAccounting errors are specific and will provide you with enough information for troubleshooting purposes. Setting the Profile Option ‘PA: Debug Mode’ = Yes will provide more detail information in the log file.

How can I find out which parameters are valid for an AutoAccounting Function?

This profile option is used by the Self Service Web Applications Personal Home Page (also known as ICX) to determine the base URL needed to launch an application, which in this case is a Forms application.

What is FORMS60_TIMEOUT?FORMS60_TIMEOUT is an environment setting that determines the maximum idle time (in minutes) before f60webmx shuts down. Note that it will only terminate an idle middle tier process, i.e. one which is waiting for the "next message" from the client. If the middle tier process is running a transaction or waiting for a query to complete it will not have take effect.

How do you enable Forms Runtime Diagnostics (FRD) in Apps? To enable Forms Runtime Diagnostics (FRD):

– login to Apps as sysadmin – click on Profile/System – query ICX%FORMS%LAUNCHER – add the following to the end of its value at user level: ?record=collect&log=/tmp/forms_frd.log

Note that like any Apps profiles you can do this on various levels e.g. site, user, etc. so that you target your FRD accordingly. Also be aware that FRD incurs significant overhead to Apps processing so disable it when not in use

How do you generate Apps Forms modules or FMB files?Oftentimes as part of upgrading Forms or modifying a Form module or applying a patch modifying a Form module, you would encounter an issue that would necessitate manually regenerating the Forms module executable or FMX file. To do this you issue the following command:

What is the sequence in which Forms resolves program unit calls? Forms will attempt to resolve a program unit call in the following sequence:

Program Units node Forms Library Database

Where can you find the source Forms modules for Apps? Apps places all its source (FMB) files in the $AU_TOP/forms/<language> directory whereas the FMX files reside in their respective $PRODUCT_TOP/forms/<language> directory. On the other hand, all menu (MMB, MMX) and library (PLL and PLX) files are copied to the $AU_TOP/resource directory.

How can you find the version of Forms in Apps? Once you are in an Apps form …

click on Help click on About Oracle Applications

information is under the Current Form section. The Form Name corresponds to the FMB and FMX file for that form. The Form Version corresponds to the release level of that form.

How can I open an Apps form in Forms Builder

If you want to open a product specific form, make sure you have all its associated forms and libraries copied over. Since it is quite difficult to pinpoint exactly what this is, its best to just copy over the entire contents of $AU_TOP/forms/<language> and $AU_TOP/resource.

How can you confirm the version of the FMX or FMB file? Oftentimes, once you determine the version and name of the current form you want to peek into the internal workings of the actual form itself. To ensure that you are peeking at the right release of the FMB file you can do the following:

$adident Header FNDSCSGN.fmb

If you simply copy the form over to a a machine that does not have Apps installed, you will run into is a lot of FRM-18108: "Failed to load the following objects" errors. This is because an Apps form is usually dependent on a host of other forms, libaries and menus.

If you want to open the TEMPLATE.fmb form, make sure you have the following forms, libraries, copied over as well from the $AU_TOP/forms/<language> and $AU_TOP/resource directories:

Objects are grouped under their respective nodes. For example, all of the windows defined in a form module appear under the Windows node; all the LOVs defined in the form module appearunder the LOVs node and all the program units appear under the Program Units node. It is important to familiarize yourself with this in case you need to navigate within an Apps form during the course of debugging a problem.

Here is a sample code could be used to make all the responsibilities read only for a specific user. I am sure we can use it in different variations.

1. Open the Custom.pll in the Form Builder. 2.Add the following sample code in the Procedure Event for the event WHEN-NEW-FORM-INSTANCE 3.Compile the Custom.pll and place under the directory $AU_TOP/resource

Friends, here is Oracle Project billing insight on its integration with AR. How to Interface Oracle Project Intercompany Invoices to Payables

To explain how intercompany invoices are interfaced to Payables

When the provider operating unit runs the Tieback Invoices from Receivables process, the intercompany invoices are automatically copied into the interface table of the receiver operating unit’s Payables. Intercompany invoices interfaced to Payables are identified with the following attributes:

• Source. All intercompany invoices have a source of Projects Intercompany Invoices.

In addition, the interface process matches the tax code from each invoice line of the Receivables invoice to the appropriate Oracle Payables tax code. This process indicates that the Payables invoice distributions do not include tax amounts, so that the Payables Open Interface process creates the invoice distributions for the entire invoice by grouping the tax lines based on the following attributes:

Last few days I have been involved with the Oracle Projects module. I’ll try and put forth some basic learning of this module.

Oracle Projects is meant primarily for organizations that are project-oriented. Using this module, it becomes easy to track costs, budget and track the project status.

Oracle Projects consists of the following products:

• Oracle Project Costing

• Oracle Project Billing

• Oracle Project Connect for Microsoft Project

• Oracle Activity Management Gateway

• Oracle Project Analysis Collection Pack

Prior to Oracle Projects Setup, one has to setup the Set of Books in GL, setup Organization and Organization hierarchy in Oracle HRMS, define employees and job in HRMS and create customer in Oracle Receivables. However if Oracle Projects is being installed as a standalone package then one needs to define all above in Oracle Projects itself. Some other mandatory setups include defining locations, defining implementation options, defining Project Accounting periods, defining expenditure types and categories, define revenue categories, etc. Also one has to create a burdening hierarchy in Oracle HRMS which may vary from the Project or Task Organization hierarchy.

Invariably a Project is broken into a hierarchy of tasks as per Work Breakdown Structure (WBS, a hierarchy of tasks that rollup into a project) to manage project and task related information. One can define as many levels of tasks in a hierarchy in Oracle Projects. However, proper naming conventions need to be followed while naming projects, tasks and sub-tasks. An organization has to be associated with a project and a Task, which may be same or different.

One can have three different Project Types for managing the cost of a project: Indirect, Capital and Contract. An Indirect Project Type is used to track the overhead costs and labor hours for overhead activities like Admin, Legal, etc. Capital Project Type is selected to track costs and labor hours related to asset development activities which ultimately results in an asset for the organization. A Contract Project Type is selected in case the costs are reimbursed by a client.

Oracle Costing is the used for processing of expenditures for finding out costs which can be attributed to projects and tasks which can then be posted to GL corresponding to different account lines. There are two cost amounts associated to each transaction: Raw and Burdened. The raw cost is the actual cost of the work performed, and the burden cost is the indirect cost or overhead of work performed, like administrative cost. The Burden cost is calculated by multiplying Raw Cost with the Burden Multiplier. The burdened cost is the total cost that is incurred, i.e., the sum of raw cost and burden cost.

Burden Cost = Raw Cost x Burden Multiplier

Burdened Cost = Raw Cost + Burden Cost

More on Oracle Projects, primarily I’ll try and provide inputs on Burdening Cost and Oracle Project Billing in subsequent days.

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Shivmohan Purohit - A Learner by Heart and ERP Professional by Work. Contribution to success of my organization and people around. Learning new things everyday.
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